Maybe Micro-Transactions And Action Wasn’t A Good Idea For Dead Space 3

Since the launch of Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3, one game has sold double the amount of the other. And yes, it’s the one with micro-transactions.

Dead Space 3 launched two weeks before Crysis 3, where sales for the two games sits at 605,000 for Dead Space 3 and 260,000 for Crysis 3–in February. Two weeks of extra sales really amounted to that much of a change.

To compare the games, 2.94-million people invested in Crysis 2, where only 2.85-million invested in Dead Space 2. That means that Crysis is the more popular franchise. Following that, Crysis 2 scored an average of 85 on Metacritic were Dead Space 2 scored 88. It’s basically the exact same score.

Dead Space 3’s sales is 26.6% worse than that of Dead Space 2, as it stands. Perhaps micro-transactions and a more ‘action-orientated’ outset wasn’t a good idea. Maybe it was something else.

Crysis 3’s sales seem to be a little better than Dead Space 3, if you assume that the sales for the games were spread out evenly for the days they were released. It seems review scores for predecessors aren’t that important, too.

Previously on eGamer, we’ve spoken about micro-transactions quite a bit. We’ve had contrasting views from authors. My belief is that it isn’t that bad–it offers something to players who want it, and leaves those who don’t want it alone. It works both ways.

The main argument about it is, “it breaks immersion.” Fair enough, that is somewhat true, however is that really such a problem? Saying “Press X” isn’t really going to change much and break much immersion.

We’ve had worse things.

I for one find that killing hordes and hordes of enemies to be a worse thing than micro-transactions. That’s just a cop-out to make games longer than they should be. More enemies, same price.

Companies want to make money, and the only way to maximise on a limited-playability game is to add something like micro-transactions. Best part, you don’t need to participate.

Have you ever been having fun, playing a game on your phone, when it tells you ‘Sorry, you don’t have enough energy to do that,’ leaving you with the choice of either waiting until tomorrow to finish whatever you were doing, or paying between $1 – 99 on various quantities of energy crystals. Dead Space 3’s micro-transactions are only the beginning. It will continue to get worse and worse unless people oppose this bullshit. The only game thus far that has got it right is dota 2, since the transactions have no bearing on gameplay and are purely aesthetic.

http://twitter.com/MatuMikey Michael Matusowsky

Those type of games are the worst because they affect gameplay :(.

http://egamer.co.za Dean Oberholzer

That’s not necessarily true.

In fact, there is absolutely no proof that this is the case, or will be the case.

With the mobile games it evident because the game is free-to-play. If games were free-to-play on consoles, and this happens, that is a different situation altogether.

As long as the consumer is buying the game, I doubt that they will go that route. It will be a massive waste of money in development because people will not actually purchase it.

http://twitter.com/deshni_naidoo Deshni Naidoo

I hate those games. Damn you Campus Life, ruin my life!

http://twitter.com/MatuMikey Michael Matusowsky

Duck you deadspace 3 i hope you burn.

Trebzz

Dead Space and Crysis 3 I hope you burn like TH… Ok I need to stop that but I still like it when people run a loss :P